The Spanish Bride

3

By Christmas, everybody except those who still filled the hospitals to overflowing, had settled down into the usual winter routine. The weather was very cold, sometimes wet, sometimes snowy, occasionally foggy, but provided one got plenty of exercise this was not much of a hardship. While Staff-officers followed his lordship’s hounds, others, not so well provided with mounts, took shot-guns out, and tramped for miles after woodcock, or went coursing with Harry on plains that teemed with hares. The rank-and-file went rabbiting with ferrets and a native pack of mongrels and harriers. They enjoyed far better sport than his lordship did, for they never came home empty-handed, while it was well known that his lordship’s hounds had only killed one fox that season, and that by mobbing. Foxes used to head for the banks of the Coa, and go to ground in holes in the rocks, but as his lordship hunted more for exercise than for sport, that never seemed to worry him. Headquarters amusements were voted very tame by the gay Light Bobs. To begin with, Frenada was a flea-ridden village, with dung between all the cobble-stones, and refuse from the cottages cast out into the street. Most of the houses were in a state of decay, and not even his lordship’s headquarters were weather-tight. His secretaries, having stopped the rickety windows, were obliged to work by candlelight all day, and even then their fingers were often numbed by the cold. Most of the houses were of the pattern common to the district: whitewashed dwellings with stables beneath. There was only one lady at headquarters that winter, Mrs Scovell, who gave evening loo-parties from time to time. His lordship kept open house, of course, and a very good table besides (he would pay as much as eight shillings for a hare); but it was only the great men who were invited to his dinners. There were rather too many great men at Frenada for comfort, thought the rest of the army. The Leg of Mutton, and the Cauliflower, the only decent inns in the place always teemed with Staff-officers, some of them very good sort of men, but too many of them conceited young sprigs, doing the dandy in velvet-forage caps with gold tassels, grey-braided coats and fancy waistcoats of every colour of the rainbow. Several of these ‘Counts’, as the army called the dandies, were his lordship’s aides-de-camp, and by no means conciliating in their manner towards regimental officers. Of course, if you had the luck to run into Lord March, or Ulysses de Burgh, or Fitzroy Somerset, you would carry away with you the kindest memories of old Douro’s family; but it was quite a puzzle to know how his lordship had come to choose some of the other young suckers to be his aides-de-camp.

Then there were the servants: a shocking set of idle good-for-nothings, swarming all over the town, loud-voiced in the sutlers’ shops, drunk in the posadas, overbearing with the villagers. If you wanted to get a few plates from the tinman, you had actually to force your way through a clamorous crowd of batmen at his door: and if you tried to buy some writing-paper at the sutler’s, it was all Lombard Street to an eggshell some Staff-officer’s pert private servant would snap up the last quire of English cream-laid from under your very nose, leaving you to pay an extortionate price for the thin, cross-grained folio made in the country. But if you wanted to hear the latest news, or to see an English newspaper before it was months old, you did your shopping at Frenada rather than at Almeida. You picked up the latest songs there, too: there were two much in vogue that winter, and it was odd if you spent an hour in Frenada without hearing either Ah, quel plaisir d’etre soldat, or Ahé, Marmont, hummed in the streets. Very good tunes they were: it was said that old Douro was particularly fond of Ahé, Marmont, and often called for it at his parties. Old Douro left Frenada in December, and went off to Cadiz for six weeks. Small blame to him! said his troops, Spreading scandalous stories of his supposed activities there. The wonder was that any man, with the power of choosing his ground, should have selected Frenada for his headquarters. What was left of you, after the fleas and the bugs had eaten their fill, was blown away by the bitter winds that swept through the streets; and there was not a woman in the place worth looking at. Good luck to his lordship, the old dog! with the pick of the southern beauties at Cadiz to share his bed!

Although Frenada might be an unappetizing town, the country round it was extremely picturesque, particularly in the vicinity of the Coa, a wild river running between masses of weathered rocks, through grand ravines, and bordered by stunted trees, and the ruins of once fortified villages. Rather reminiscent of Mrs Radcliffe’s tales, some thought, with far too many wolves for comfort. It was not at all the kind of country you could fancy settling in. All very well for lovers of the romantic, but a plain man would prefer a more placid and a richer countryside. One of the greatest difficulties was to get sufficient fodder for your horses. All the mules had to be sent away for forage; and barley (if you could get it) was shockingly dear. Staff-officers at Frenada said that his lordship talked quite openly of wintering in the district next year; and when it was pointed out to him that the army had eaten up nearly all the available bullocks, he replied with his neigh of a laugh: ‘Well then, we must now set about eating all the sheep, and when they are gone, I suppose we must go.’